KENYA: Kenyan villagers fear for safety after Briton killed, wife kidnapped

Record ID: 361691

  • Title: KENYA: Kenyan villagers fear for safety after Briton killed, wife kidnapped
  • Date: 13th September 2011
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Swahili) VILLAGE IMAM, MOHAMMED BWANAHERI, SAYING: ''After the attack, police and dogs followed the assailants' footprints. They led to the seaside -- on the other side of the ridge.''
  • Embargoed: 28th September 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya, Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Reuters ID: LVA38213GWLCYQZNLVQXASUTKXDD
  • Story Text: Villagers in the Kenyan seaside resort where gunmen killed a British man and kidnapped his wife said on Monday (September 12) they feared for their own safety and were saddened by the unusual attack.
    On Sunday (September 11) gunman raided the bungalow where the couple stayed on a remote beach resort in northern Kenya near Somalia, Kenyan police and Britain's Foreign Office said.
    Kenyan police said they were treating the raid as banditry for now and could not say whether the gunmen had come from nearby Somalia to kidnap the couple, who were the only guests at the Kiwayu Safari Village resort north of Lamu.
    "After the attack, police and dogs followed the assailants' footprints. They led to the seaside -- on the other side of the ridge," Mohammed Bwanaheri, the village Imam, told Reuters.
    "The community is worried. The inhabitants think the assailants could come next time and take their wives and daughters," Bwanaheri added.
    Kidnapping for ransom has chiefly been carried out by Somali pirates but Somali gunmen have attacked westerners just across the border with Kenya on several occasions. Three aid workers were kidnapped in July 2009 and two western nuns in November 2008.
    But an attack of this nature has never taken place at this resort, a Mkokoni village resident told Reuters.
    ''There was security there. And the security here is okay. But what has happened is something sad. It has never happened that way. That is the first time," said Dash.
    The south of Somalia bordering Kenya is mainly controlled by al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab rebels, who have been fighting the western-backed government in the capital Mogadishu for more than four years.
    The rebels withdrew from the capital Mogadishu in early August and were reported to be running low on funds, but they went on the attack on Sunday (September 11) near the Kenyan border a long way north of the coast, seizing a town from government militia.
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